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Pressure Could Force Hamas Into Deal (Ori Nir, Sep 08, 2006, The Forward)

[I]nternal public pressure is mounting on Hamas.

The P.A.’s employees have launched an open-ended strike — practically rendering the Hamas government dysfunctional. Palestinians are demanding that Hamas compromise to allow international aid into the financially starved West Bank and Gaza.

“Currently, the entire Palestinian system is in crisis mode: The government is in crisis, the presidency is in crisis, the whole society is in crisis. This requires change,” said Ziad Abu-Amr, an independent member of the Palestinian Legislative Council that represents Gaza City, in an interview with the Forward. Speaking from his Gaza home during a phone interview, Abu-Amr added that Hamas knows it has to change something and that the easiest thing for it to change is the structure of the government. [...]

Fatah insists that the platform meet the three conditions set by the international community for relations with a Palestinian government: renunciation of violence, recognition of Israel and endorsement of all past agreements signed by Israel and the Palestinian leadership. Hamas still resists accepting these conditions, but it is facing a dilemma, Abu-Amr said. “It is a movement that can’t make political and ideological transformations in a short period of time,” he continued. “It needs time. But Hamas also knows that the Palestinians don’t have time.”

Fueling the sense of crisis is the strike by P.A. employees. The vast majority of the 170,000 Palestinian public-sector workers are participating in the massive strike, including teachers and some workers of the healthcare system. The police union announced that it would join the strike this week, as well. Government employees either have not been paid at all or have received small subsidies since March. The donor community is supplying some funds for vital workers through Abbas’s office. Hamas officials have managed to smuggle some cash for salaries in recent months, but not enough to appease the livid government workers.

A report issued last week by the World Bank states that because of Israeli travel restrictions and the sharp drop in international aid, the Palestinian territories face “a year of unprecedented economic recession — real incomes may contract by at least a third in 2006, and poverty to affect close to two thirds of the population.” A United Nations report published in July said that 70% of Palestinian households are living in poverty.

Conflicting reports were published in recent days regarding the extent of progress that Abbas is achieving in his unity-government negotiations with Hamas. Some senior officials have told Palestinian reporters that the two sides are on the verge of agreement. Others said that the gulf between the two sides is still wide. A source familiar with the negotiations, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Forward that Abbas is “watering down” his proposal to the point where he runs the risk of falling short of meeting the international community’s conditions for talks with, and economic aid for, the P.A. The source noted, however, that the mounting public pressure on Hamas is causing “cracks” in the Islamist movement’s absolutist position. Therefore, Abbas senses that he could find the “sweet spot” that would allow him to strike a deal that manages to open the door for international aid.

Small cracks in Hamas’s wall of resistance have become publicly visible in recent weeks. Senior Hamas officials expressed full support for the striking civil servants and promised to do everything possible to break the international economic boycott of the P.A.

On August 27, Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad published an unusual opinion article in Al-Ayyam in which he sharply criticized the “resistance” — apparently referring to the armed wings of Palestinian organizations — for creating a state of “anarchy and corruption” in Gaza. In the article, a plea addressed to the resistance and headlined “Have Pity on Gaza,” he criticized the continued launching of rockets into Israel, although many such attacks are carried out by members of his own movement. Since Israel withdrew from Gaza one year ago, Hamad wrote, Israeli retaliation against the rocket attacks killed more than 500 Palestinians and injured more than 3,000. Only “three or four” Israelis were killed by rockets launched from Gaza, he wrote. Because of “our mistakes,” Hamad added, “the occupation returned to Gaza.” Hamad’s extraordinary article, Palestinian experts say, was a reply to the growing view that Hamas bears the responsibility for the chaos and poverty in Gaza.

Plan To Pay War Bills Exposes Israeli Cabinet’s Fiscal Fissures (Gershom Gorenberg, Sep 08, 2006, The Forward)

“The budget I am presenting today is not the one I intended to present… before the war,” said Finance Minister Abraham Hirchson, sounding remarkably tired as he described his proposal for next year’s annual budget to the media on Tuesday, September 5. “The war has imposed new priorities upon us.”

Hirchson’s plan allocated more than $1 billion to replenish the army’s depleted supplies and rebuild the missile-shattered towns of the Galilee. It postponed scheduled increases in the minimum wage and in government stipends that primarily help a growing underclass. It rejected tax increases to pay for the war.

Actually, this wasn’t the budget that the hapless Hirchson initially had intended to announce at his press conference, which was originally scheduled for the previous day. According to media leaks, his budget was to include a sharp rise in university tuition, significant cuts in government stipends and reduced help to recently discharged soldiers. Even an allocation for protecting public buses — used primarily by poorer Israelis — from terror attacks was supposed to go.

But his plans changed. The fury from Ehud Olmert’s coalition partners, who were all committed to a shift in economic priorities, was so intense that the prime minister told Hirchson to revise the massive package before presenting it.

Folks are even less likely to accept guns instead of butter when they're pop-guns.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 7, 2006 5:15 PM